A British television personality told a media ethics inquiry today in London that CNN talk host Piers Morgan gave him a lesson in how to hack phones back when Morgan was involved with the U.K. Mirror newspaper, AP reports.

Jeremy Paxman, a prominent BBC quiz show host and TV news presenter, said Morgan discussed the procedure over lunch at Mirror headquarters in 2002.

The story reports that Paxman said Morgan “turned to me and said, ‘Have you got a mobile phone?’

"I said, ‘yes,’ and he asked if there was a security setting on the message bit of it. … I didn’t know what he was talking about.

"He then explained the way to get access to people’s messages was to go to the factory default setting and press either 0000 or 1234 and that if you didn’t put on your own code, (in) his words, ‘You’re a fool.’"

The testimony before Lord Justice Brian Leveson was part of the ongoing fallout from the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal, stemming from alleged unethical and illegal practices at the company’s now-defunct News of the World, which Morgan edited for a while before he moved on to the Mirror, the story notes.

Morgan may already be in trouble at CNN, for unrelated reasons. As we reported previously, his ratings have recently dipped into treacherously low territory.